The Science of On-Camera Acting

by Andréa Morris

  When you first learn a new task, like driving, you use working memory to consciously execute every step. Because working memory is limited, you make a lot of mistakes when you’re learning. Working memory is inextricably linked with your inner critic, who is well aware of these mistakes and the limitations of working memory. This is why you’re self-conscious of your every move, resulting in jerky, curb-clipping, “nervous driving.” As you become more skilled, unconscious, implicit procedural memory takes over for working memory, smoothing out the bumps. If you are an experienced driver, procedural memory allows you to drive across town, maneuvering through innumerable life-threatening hazards, daydreaming through your entire commute and arriving at your destination with almost no memory of the trip. When skills are ingrained and removed from working memory, we tend to experience them as naturally and reflexively as instincts.

  Although working memory is critical for learning, in a creative context it functions optimally when in balance with other mental faculties. However, the vast majority of acting training tends to throw off this balance by placing emphasis on the intellect, on using working memory to analyze, conceptualize, and verbalize reflexes, emotions, impulses, and instincts, making them abstract and putting actors in their heads. It’s imperative to note that all analytic-acting approaches—approaches that use language and concepts for analyzing and creating backstories, inner monologues, and subtext, and for defining obstacles, wants, needs, objectives, etc.—rely heavily on working memory.

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  “Psychological scientists find that while increased working memory capacity seems to boost mathematical problem solving, it might actually get in the way of creative problem solving.”

  Association for Psychological Science6

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  Analytic approach’s reliance on working memory

  An overemphasis on working memory has come at a price for actors. Common acting exercises conceptualize human experiences by taking natural, spontaneous, reflexive experiences—such as listening, reacting, feeling, and expressing emotion—and serving them up for contemplation. The very act of isolating instinctual aspects of ourselves and examining them under a microscope alters their nature, because it brings them back into awkward working memory.

  You’ve probably been in a class practicing listening exercises and been the recipient of stellar listening executed by a grade-A acting student. The class likely had the importance of listening explained to them, and this student is now explicitly working at listening, with their head slightly cocked, penetrating you with their eyes—the very same markers used in clinical psychology to identify psychopaths. “The particular stare of the psychopath…is an intense, relentless gaze…as if the psychopath is directing all of his intensity toward you through his eyes.”7 Scientist Robert Hare, author of the official Psychopathy Checklist, refers to the psychopath’s stare as, “Intense eye contact and piercing eyes.”8

  Psychopaths often have to feign certain emotions and corresponding expressions because they are incapable of actually feeling and reacting to them. Their lack of empathy limits their capacity to connect emotionally to others. Therefore, many of their behaviors that should be unconscious and reflexive are acts. They use their working memory to consciously execute the task of listening, resulting in the overly affected gaze. Psychopaths can be incredibly charismatic, but they also frequently induce degrees of discomfort in others. This is because the majority of people are fairly good at sensing when natural human responses are contrived.

  The focus on listening is propagated by the acting aphorism that acting is about listening. In an interview, Ethan Hawke offers insights he gleaned from shooting the dialogue-intensive, Academy-Award-nominated Before Sunrise film trilogy with director Richard Linklater:

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  “Actors always talk about listening and stuff, but Rick’s always reminding us that, ‘you know what, you’re not actually listening. From this moment forward you’re planning what you’re going to say and you’re waiting for a pause long enough to get it in.’”9

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  An interesting experiment is to use a smartphone to film yourself and other consenting friends in a context where you can forget the camera is on. During playback, watch what happens when you are actually listening.

  Emotion

  If the body is the actor’s tool, this tool differs from all others in its ability to feel and express emotion. Yet there are few groups of people with more emotional blocks than actors. Actors are constantly working to evoke, manipulate, master, and even fake emotion. This emphasis is in direct opposition to the very nature of emotion. Emotional blocks arise because actors spend so much energy putting their emotions under the spotlight of working memory.

  Impulse

  Impulses are unconscious reactions and urges. They signify our true feelings, fears, and desires. Our impulses broadcast who we really are and are filtered through our inner critic, so that we may survive in a socially advanced society. Our true selves are usually only embraced in specific contexts. One of these contexts is acting for the screen. When we talk about an actor and “truth” we are talking about actors expressing these uncensored impulses. Filtering impulse filters honesty. When watching an actor perform we crave an honest, unfiltered display of impulse and emotion.

  The value of some analytic-acting exercises can be found in their ability to distract your inner critic while impulse tiptoes by, trying not to disturb it. Yet you may have found that when the stakes are high, your inner critic rears its ugly head and freezes impulse in its tracks. This is even the case when a particular analytic technique requires that the actor “forget the work.” Forgetting the work can be interpreted as yet another task for your already-overwhelmed working memory. It’s the try not to think of a pink elephant or ironic process theory that describes the ironic rebound of unwanted thoughts. “Ironic processing is the psychological process whereby an individual’s deliberate attempts to suppress or avoid certain thoughts (thought suppression) render those thoughts more persistent.”10 Telling you to forget the work is like telling you not to look down if you’re walking a tightrope. An even safer bet is to get your feet on firm ground.

  Trying versus struggling

  The word try has two different meanings in a creative context. Trying something new for the purpose of experimentation and exploration is the constructive kind of trying. This kind of trying is the basis for discovery and how actors grow. It is the kind of trying done while the pressure is off, when there isn’t immediate pressure to produce results. Trying to coax something that you fear won’t come without exerting effort is the other kind of trying. The latter is trying for specific effect. The pressure of trying to achieve a specific result creates anxiety that poses a unique hazard for screen actors. When pressure is on, our faces often engage in something called involuntary leakage. This is a “leaked” facial expression revealing the pressure you are feeling and whatever other emotions you are trying to conceal or work through as you seek to center yourself in the character and the scene. When you exert effort in almost any other profession, leakage is not a problem. In screen acting, what’s happening on your face is your work, so involuntary leakage is problematic. Trying for effect can also occur when an actor tries to stir something in another actor or in their audience. This kind of trying pierces the veil of the character, revealing the actor’s insecurities beneath. It advertises the actor’s struggle for results.

  Another problem with trying for effect is that it assumes that what’s going on in the moment isn’t good enough. It may not be, but the effort that ensues is not the answer. As soon as you feel the urge to work, trying sets up the opponent on the other end of a game of tug-of-war. One end is where you are, and the other is where you think you should be. This opposition clogs impulse. An example of the unhelpful kind of trying is seen in countless exercises designed to ground you in the emotional “reality” of the scene. These exercises require that you focus on some external memory or endow yo
ur acting partner with traits from some imagined or remembered person. I don’t think it’s the best use of creative energy to leave the moment to conjure some memory from your past. Nor abandon the moment by throwing imagined emotional wallpaper over everything. If you are trying to bedazzle or block out what is going on around you, you are creating that tug-of-war by fighting for a made-up scenario over reality, when your job is to turn make-believe into reality. This may seem like only a semantic distinction, but it has real ramifications. Trying to cover the moment with memories or fantasies is often stressful to the actor and painful to watch. Staying out of your head means no longer trying to deny any part of the moment with a memory or fantasy. With the method in this book, you will be trying for discovery, not trying for results. By trying for discovery, the desired results follow expeditiously.

  Make your audience lean in

  Many actors, particularly in auditions, have a tendency to lean forward, jutting their chin out when speaking their lines. This is often predicated on a direction that an actor must do something to the other character and do something to their audience. Actors are often told they must try to convince, try to get what they want, try to listen, or try to communicate their need. All this effort causes actors to lean forward. There’s nothing mysterious about effort. It broadcasts your need to please. When you stop trying, you stop showing, and you become interesting. As a result, you stop leaning forward and those watching your work lean in.

  The value of nonanalytic creativity

  In many ways acting shares qualities and challenges similar to meditation. Monks of Eastern religions and philosophies refer to the train of thought constantly racing through our heads as the thinker or monkey mind. As we try to meditate, the thinker generally struggles for something to do and gets in our way. Likewise, the thinker often interrupts an actor’s creative flow. Meditation, like acting, follows the same simple-isn’t-easy principle. Mastery involves a great deal of practice and honoring a part of the mind separate from the thinker. This part of the mind is frequently undervalued in modern Western cultures, where the classic analytic definition of intelligence still reigns supreme. Nonanalytic creative contributions are often discredited even among artists. Emphasis on working memory is the chorus of our inner critic, adept at heralding analytic contributions and trouncing impulse. Actors sometimes feel insecure if they are not contributing in a way that involves the intellect. There is a fear that this perhaps reduces actors to puppets of the writer and director. But the confusion undermines the significant contribution within the actor’s domain. Embracing unconscious, moment-to-moment creative impulse under utterly fabricated circumstances is the actor’s most challenging endeavor, not to be cheapened or unsung. The actor’s duties are unique and differ from many of those handled by the writer and the director’s explicit working memory. What actors do is more closely related to abstract painting than writing. Actors, as well as their collaborators, need to halt the trend of undermining creative contributions that lie principally outside the scope of language, concepts, and analytic working memory.

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  “Athletes under pressure sometimes try to control their performance in a way that disrupts it. This control, which is often referred to as ‘paralysis by analysis’ stems from an overactive prefrontal cortex. One way to circumvent this type of paralysis is to employ learning techniques that minimize reliance on working memory to begin with.” (Emphasis mine)

  Sian Beilock, cognitive scientist11

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  As a screen actor, you must contend with pressures inherent in the art and business of the acting world that render you vulnerable to the yammering of your inner critic. You must also commandeer those mental faculties that best meet your creative needs. Taking into account real-world labor conditions while paying mind to what science now tells us about ourselves, an optimal acting approach is likely to employ nonanalytic learning techniques that minimize reliance on working memory.

  Sense-memory versus imagination

  The great chasm between acting schools that use memory (e.g., Strasberg) or imagination (e.g., Adler) implies a greater distinction between imagination and memory than actually exists:

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  “Researchers have known for decades that memories are unreliable. They’re particularly adjustable when actively recalled because at that point they’re pulled out of a stable molecular state.”

  Science journalist Virginia Hughes12

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  Studies show that recalling a memory involves recreating it. The disparity between what we recall about events in our lives versus what really happened can be quite sobering. With sense-memory exercises, you are bringing up an emotionally impactful memory from your past. But while doing so, you overwrite the actual authentic memory by endowing it with the traits of your present acting exercise. The more you try to get meat out of the memory, the more it’s stripped of its original poignancy. With overuse, you risk reaching back for your memory only to discover it’s been turned into a tool. I question whether this unwitting subversion of our most meaningful memories—memories that form our identities—is why so many actors, including Stella Adler and Constantin Stanislavski, felt the Method was making actors neurotic. But that debate is irrelevant if neither imposing your own memories nor imagining your character’s has any observable effect on-camera. By experimenting with the techniques outlined in this book, you will find yourself naturally gravitating away from time and energy wasting activities that do not translate on screen.

  Chapter Endnotes

  1 Beilock, Sian, Choke (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2011), 130.

  2 Barry Kaufman, Scott, “The Real Neuroscience of Creativity: Beautiful Minds, Scientific American Blog Network,” Scientific American Global RSS. blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/08/19/the-real-neuroscience-of-creativity/, accessed July 6, 2014.

  3 Doolittle, Peter, “How your ‘Working Memory’ Makes Sense of the World,” www.ted.com/talks/peter_doolittle_how_your_working_memory_makes_sense_of_the_world.html, accessed July 6, 2014.

  4 Luethi, Mathias, Beat Meier, and Carmen Sandi, “Stress Effects on Working Memory, Explicit Memory, and Implicit Memory For Neutral and Emotional Stimuli in Healthy Men,” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2.

  5 Doolittle, Peter, “How Your ‘Working Memory’ Makes Sense of the World,” www.ted.com/talks/peter_doolittle_how_your_working_memory_makes_sense_of_the_world.html, accessed July 6, 2014.

  6 Association for Psychological Science, “Greater Working Memory Capacity Benefits Analytic, but Not Creative, Problem-Solving,” ScienceDaily, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120807132209.htm, accessed July 6, 2014.

  7 Jones, Mizzie, Mask of Sanity, February 19, 2009, masksofsanity.blogspot.com/2009/02/stare-of-psychopath-whats-beneath-it.html, accessed March 7, 2014.

  8 Hare, Robert as quoted by Mizzie Jones, “Mask of Sanity,” February 19, 2009, masksofsanity.blogspot.com/2009/02/stare-of-psychopath-whats-beneath-it.html, accessed March 7, 2014.

  9 Mitchell, Elvis, KCRW The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell, June 3, 2013.

  10 Wikipedia contributors, Ironic Process Theory, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory, accessed July 6, 2014.

  11 Beilock, Sian, Choke (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2011), 60.

  12 Hughes, Virginia, “How Scientists are Learning to Shape our Memory,” Popular Science, www.popsci.com/article/science/how-scientists-are-learning-shape-our-memory?dom=tw&src=SOC, accessed July 6, 2014.

  Scientific Principles

  Applied to Acting

  Applying scientific principles to acting allows you to unpack exactly what aspects of an approach work, versus what techniques may sound good but do not produce results on-camera.

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  “The moment you heard there was a Stanislavski method, everybody said ‘well, I know the method, I know the method, I know the method.’ And so in America it got very, ve
ry confused, and confused the actors, and was not as clear as taking a piano lesson, where you have to learn the keys, they don’t change for anybody.”

  Stella Adler1

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  Correlation is not causation

  Is great acting and career success caused by, or merely correlated with, acting training? The correlation is not causation principle used in science and statistics means that just because one thing followed another, doesn’t mean that the first thing caused the other. In interviews, actors often talk passionately about their process, but on set you’ll frequently find they aren’t doing it.

  “Stepping,” key Makeup said as she stepped up into the trailer. Calling out “stepping” is a rule observed on set when anyone is stepping in or out of the makeup and hair trailer. The reason for this is that stepping in or out of a trailer causes the whole trailer to rebound for a moment on its wheels with the displacement of weight. The bump can cause makeup artists to smear eyeliner across the actor’s face, or hair stylists to burn the actor with a curling iron. Everyone stops what they are doing for a beat when they hear “stepping.” I looked over at another actress sitting in a salon chair facing the mirror that stretched the length of the RV. She had graduated from Juilliard, and I was asking her about her training and her process. We chatted most of the morning, as this film was a period piece, and it took many hours to get us in full regalia. Later that day when we were standing on our marks, I leaned in and asked her if she was doing the techniques she described earlier. She waved her hand and laughed, “No, no, I don’t do any of that anymore.” Just because an actor was trained with a particular method, and even espouses that method, doesn’t mean their training is the root cause of their talent and accomplishments. Actors are unreliable narrators about their creative processes. Most likely this is because words and concepts can’t fully capture it.